crochet!

I got out a couple of books yesterday and that ball of orange cotton yarn that I bought on sale ages ago and settled down to teach myself crochet. It took a while to understand what I was supposed to be doing and I had to cross check several times between the books which sometimes told me to do different things — I don’t think there is ever one book that tells you everything you need to know, which is why it’s ok to buy lots of craft books.

Anyway… I was finally sort of getting the hang of it, although my little swatch was quite ropey really and I kept adding and losing stitches at the edges, but I was quite chuffed that at least the middle was actually looking pretty ok! I put a picture up on Instagram and several people took the time to offer encouraging words. Thank you!

Last night I decided to start a second swatch and this one turned out much better. The movements with yarn and hook are starting to feel more natural too, although it is probably not a good idea to learn crochet while live tweeting a Eurovision semi final, and I did add an extra stitch at one point so I just removed it when I noticed it a row or two later.

Second attempt!

The yarn is quite soft so I might use this for cleaning my glasses.

The green yarn has arrived for the second of my Christmas balls for May in the Merry Knitalong, so I made sure to finish off the first one. It’s the second version of the Xs and Os design from Arne and Carlos’s 55 Christmas balls to knit, and I’ll be using the green yarn for the first version. I think they’ll look quite nice together.

Indian summer

The cable tweed jumper is almost finished, just in time for Winter I would have said, but we’re having a bit of an Indian Summer in Melbourne. I had a day off work yesterday and was pottering around the garden in a T-shirt and shorts.

The neckline is now finished so there’s just some seaming to go. There was a bit of mathematics involved, so I got out pen and paper to calculate out how many stitches and where to pick up at the neckline edges, allowing for a couple of extra stitches at the left shoulder which is yet to be seamed together.

Unfortunately my careful calculations didn’t save me from a stupid mistake in using the wrong size needles to knit the neckband but at least I noticed just before I cast off so it could have been worse, and I was able to rip back to the row where I had picked up and start over.

The Digger’s Club Winter Gardening catalogue arrived in the post this week, which is always inspiring, so with the ground still warm and a little rain expected tomorrow I planted some more seeds in the kitchen garden… two varieties of carrot, Early Chantenay and All Seasons, and some swede turnips, plus a pot of chives in a sunny spot by the back door. I’m also planning to put down seeds in seed trays for silverbeet, spinach, lettuce and spring onion.

It’s amazing how much you can get done just with one day off work. I also finished the first of the “last of Noro” socks.

I usually cast on for the second sock right away but I need the needles for the Merry Knitalong Christmas balls so the second sock will have to wait! There are two Christmas balls in the knitalong this month and I’ve decided to knit the first one in green and white, but my green yarn hasn’t arrived in the post box yet, so I’ve cast on for the second one which I’ll do in red and white. This is  ”X’s and “O’s”, number 15 from Arne and Carlos’s 55 Christmas balls to knit.

The Last of Noro

KnittingSarah has just posted the May challenge for the Merry Knitalong, along with a beautiful story to keep in mind as we knit on May’s project. Of course I should say “projects” actually since there are two balls for this month. I’ve knit all my Christmas balls in red and white so far but I think I might take this month’s challenge as a chance to branch out a bit so, inspired by Martine’s example, I’m going to order some green yarn for at least one of the May balls.

Just as well I’ll have to wait a bit to get started as I realise I’m already using the DPNs I need for the Christmas balls on a sock. This is the last skein of Silk Garden sock yarn from my Noro stash, colourway 289, a mix of blues, greens and brick red.

Hopefully by the time I’ve finished the socks my green yarn for the Christmas ball will have arrived.

The title of this post reminded me of The Last of Sheila which we must watch it again soon. Have you seen it? I did a little review a while back, highly recommended!

Day 7, looking forward

The challenge of the final day of Knit and Crochet Blog Week is looking forward.

“One year from now, when the 5th Knitting & Crochet Blog Week rolls around, where do you hope your crafting will have taken you to? What new skills, projects and experiences do you hope you might have conquered or tried?”

I mentioned to someone at the start of the year that I like to make sure I learn one new thing, or travel to one new place, every year. Some of those things are so momentous that I can remember them years later: for my 38th year I learned to drive, for my 42nd I learned to swim, for my 50th I learned to knit, for my 51st I went to New York.

I remember thinking at the start of this year, my 54th year, that I’d like to add stranded colour work to my knitting repertoire and, through some wonderful  serendipity, I made contact with KnittingSarah who had announced on her blog on New Year’s Day a year long knitalong to make one ball a month from Arne and Carlos’s book 55 Christmas balls to knit. It’s since become a joint global knitalong with Martine from iMake.  I got the book as a present for the previous Christmas but had never managed to perservere but joining the knitalong gave me the support and enthusiasm to knuckle down and develop a wonderful new skill. I can see that I’m getting better every month.

By this time next year I wouldn’t mind taking that skill further, maybe a stranded colour work vest or pullover. I’ve got a few patterns in my library so it’s quite a tempting prospect. The other skill I need to learn is crochet… I think it’s going to be a busy year.

Today’s sweater

For Day 5 of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week the challenge is to try something a bit different.

Deep breath… inspired by Brenda Dayne’s “Today’s sweater” feature on her brilliant Cast-on podcast I have made an audioboo of the sweater project I’ve been working on today.

So, here is my little version of “Today’s sweater” — you may also be able to hear my dog Willy woofing in the background. Willy says hello too.

I think the WordPress player requires Flash so I hope it works for you — if not you can pop over to Audioboo and listen there.

• Pattern: “Cable Tweed Sweater” by Erika Knight, from her book Men’s knits.
• Yarn: Debbie Bliss Luxury Donegal Tweed Chunky, colour “Denim”. 

Blue and green should never be seen…

…is quite a ridiculous saying. They are two of my favourite colours, whether together or on their own.

Today’s challenge for Day 4 of the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week is to think about our favourite colour, then look at how that colour turns up in our yarn choices and our projects.

I’ve always thought of blue as my favourite colour, closely followed by green, although I think because blue was my favourite I somehow thought with my early knitting projects that I had too much blue so I mostly used other colours.

Having said that, my very first knitting project was a striped scarf in sage green and royal blue.

I was in Lincraft in Melbourne and found some of their home brand Lima alpaca blend yarn on sale and a free pattern leaflet for the scarf so the entire project cost me about $10. I was thinking that it wasn’t such an investment if it all went wrong but I was actually pretty pleased with how it came out.

I remember someone commenting that the green almost acted as a neutral against the vivid blue, and I think they were right. I hadn’t thought of colours acting as neutrals before. I wore the scarf quite a bit until I absent mindedly left it behind on a train one evening — I hope somebody found it, I’d rather think of it keeping someone warm than tossed in the rubbish.

Looking at my Ravelry projects page, it seems that after my blue and green scarf I moved onto mostly using neutrals  for a year or so before drifting back to green, and over the past year I now see that I’ve drifted back again to blue. It might have had something to do with my year-long project through 2012, my Sky Scarf.

The Sky Scarf was a conceptual knitting project created by Lea Redmond where people around the world knitted a scarf  through the year, with each row representing the colour of the sky that day in their part of the world. It really was a lovely meditative process, every lunchtime I would go for a walk and look at the sky, and every evening after work I’d come home and sit quietly, choose the colours for the day  and knit one row and back of my scarf. Each row was knit with two strands of yarn so blending the strands of yarn to match the colour of the sky was almost like painting.

My current knitting project is blue too, although it might have easily been Manatee grey (as the model is wearing in the photo).

Even though I went with blue over grey, I think this tweedy yarn reflects the qualities of Team Manatee — calm, peaceful, deep and full of character. Oh, and it looks like one of my future projects might be representative of Team Manatee too. I have 11 skeins of this beautiful Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in my stash, a souvenir of a trip to New York a couple of years ago. The colour is “Faded Quilt” in subtle shades of pale blue and grey.

A crafty infographic

For day 3 of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week the challenge is to create an infographic. We’ve been looking at infographics at my work lately but I’m not sure my computer skills are up to anything too fancy, so I decided on a crafty approach instead… my infographic uses knitting needles, a needle gauge and a pencil!

Luckily Ravelry has been around the whole time I’ve been knitting so I have a record of every project I’ve made and, as librarians do tend to categorize things, I decided to categorize my projects.

It looks like I’ve made a fairly consistent number of projects in the different categories, 10 pullovers and cardigans, 10 scarves, 9 pairs of socks, 4 pairs of gloves and 6 hats — which together add up to 10 small projects —  and 10 miscellaneous projects (where would you categorize a knitted Christmas card?).

I should do another pair of socks next to round out the numbers. Consistency would surely be one of the Team Manatee traits.

A Team Manatee jumper (or maybe a cardigan)

The challenge for day 2 of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week is to come up with an idea for a mascot project. You don’t have to make this project, but you know I think I might, or at least something inspired by the idea!

If you go over to the Spud & Chloe web site and check out the the colourways for their Sweater yarn do you see, among all those vibrant colours, a beautiful medium grey colour called Manatee. I’m not sure I’m so drawn to the wool/cotton blend yarn, but the colour would be perfect for a work jumper or cardigan, something to go with everything.

I was having a knitting discussion online one Sunday morning a while back when the talk turned to saddle shoulder sweaters for men. I’ve knit set-in sleeve and raglan sleeve pullovers but haven’t attempted a saddle shoulder version yet. We all thought saddle shoulders looked pretty handsome on men and Miss M. and I resolved to make one this year — if not exactly at the same time it would at least be a “somewhat knitalong” so we could encourage each other through the year.

It turns out I have quite a few saddle shoulder designs in my pattern stash, including some from vintage pattern books like this one. What guy librarian doesn’t need a saddle shoulder cardigan?

From Columbia Minerva Book 763, Hand knits for men. Published some time in the 1960s. Perfection!

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, day 1

Even though I am technically a day ahead of him, my Manatee Teammate Steven over at Knitting Sweaters and Sitting Still has beaten me to the punch and put up his post for day one of the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week while I appear to be already two days behind. Time to catch up!

The day one challenge is to choose a team mascot. While I was tempted for a moment by the busy and industrious Team Bee, I decided that Team Manatee was where I belonged. As Steven comments, one of the qualities of the Manatee is slow, steady persistence, so even though I’m already late before I’ve even started I’ve resolved to carry on regardless and aim to get there in the end even if not quite on schedule.

Knitting wise I think I’m actually pretty fast, but I do tend to be single minded and determined, plodding on happily through endless rows of stocking stitch and rarely tempted by the siren call of new projects. I usually take on one big project too, rather than lots of small ones, so progress is slow and steady, certainly nothing flashy like Team Peacock. You often hear knitters complaining about stocking stitch, but I really do love it, the simple stitch patterns show off beautiful yarn and simple designs are usually what I’d choose to wear. While I like the process I always focus on the outcome too, the aim is usually to end up with something I’d like to wear over a challenging project, which means I’m not really cut out for Team Monkey either.

It was really the thought that I might be able to knit myself a jumper that got me started knitting in the first place. I knitted my first in 2010, a year after I learned to knit, a plain stocking stitch sweater from Bruce Weinstein’s Knits men want using 15 balls of Sirdar Eco Wool that I picked up as a bargain purchase on eBay.

The natural undyed pale grey colour is almost the colour of the manatee. I remember as I knit the jumper being a bit concerned that I wouldn’t know how to pick up the stitches of the neckline. Wouldn’t it be terrible to get to the end and not be able to finish? But it turns out picking up stitches really is no big deal, you just need good light, patience and concentration to get the job done.

The manatee also fits nicely with my watery astrology sign, Pisces… but warmer and cuddlier than a fish, a bit sleepy and slow — but in a good way — plodding and determined. Manatees are mostly herbivores too, so quite fitting for a vegetarian. Go Team Manatee!

one sleeve done

…also the front and back so I reckon I am 3/4 of the way to done with my jumper so it should be ready for the start of winter.

Things were really going quite well until I got a bit confused by the instructions for the very top of the sleeve which, of course, I didn’t realise until I had actually finished.

The pattern is by Erika Knight who gives brilliant instructions for fully fashioned increases and decreases in her sweater patterns. I don’t think I’ve seen any other knitting patterns that specify the paired increases and decreases to use for both knit and purl rows. It’s just that she didn’t quite explain what to do when you start running out of stitches and you aren’t sure which of the patterns to keep going.

Of course it turned out I made the wrong choice, which was obvious when I came to the last line of the pattern and it suddenly all made sense. There’s a lesson there about reading ahead, and it was also helpful to pay close attention to the pictures which in this case are informative as well as decorative. After pausing for a cup of tea, it didn’t take too long to rip back a dozen rows and make good.

For the first time ever I am using the specified yarn for a pattern and I bought the exact amount of yarn called for but it looks like I’m going to have almost two 100 gram skeins left over at the end. What to do? I think Heidi Klum would frown upon the idea of a matching hat.

Pattern: “Cable tweed sweater” by Erika Knight, from her book Men’s knits: a new direction.  Yarn: Debbie Bliss Luxury Donegal Tweed Chunky, colour “Denim”.